Pre-Flight Snack: Take On Helicopters

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Take On Helicopters Pre-Order Beta access thing is now live. The full game of commercial hovering is released on the 27th, but you can get it now if you are so inclined. For some insight into what the simulator contains you can read Mr Stone’s take on the thing, where he says: “Even if the campaign turns out to be a bug-spattered nightmare, I’ll still be recommending ToH to anyone with even a passing interest in simulated flight.”

unless the only thing they have in common is that they are asian, I don’t think it’s racism.Nothing racist about saying someone looks like someone if they do. if you think comparing how similar two asian people are with respect to their appearance is racist, but comparing two white europeans on looks would not be racist, then that suggests you think there is something not normal about asian people.

Sorry, but everything you just said was a load of bullshit. I know, as a white person, you want to state your case that you too suffer the slings and arrows of racism. Don’t worry, I feel your burden, man.

The comparison of two Asian men who do not look alike can be racist, because it can stem from the belief that all Asian people look the same. When we insist that all of a race look the same, we imply that that particular race lacks individualism and thus we insinuate that we, as a race of individuals, are superior. It’s subtext.

However, I don’t believe the OP was being racist in the slightest. I think he was attempting to make a joke. I just wanted to pat you on the back, sir, and tell you I understand the white man’s burden.

Dear pathetic fallacy.
Thanks for your reply re: what I said was total bullshit.
I don’t agree with you at all.
I try to be cautious about assuming that a statement is racist just because someone involved looks anything other than European. Too many people work from the assumption that white is normal and everything else is different, and therefore has special rules. In fact that’s a ridiculous and centralised viewpoint, and represents in itself a kind of ignorance of the wider world. Your straw man about the ‘white man’s burden’ , for example, is ridiculous precisely because it assumes that there’s nowhere in this big whole wide world where people of European appearance are racially discriminated against, and I can tell you from experience that this is not the case. That said, I do recognise that there’s an existing racial stereotype which suggests that many Asian people look alike – I just don’t think that it’s racist to say that two particular Asian people resemble each other – if anything, it contradicts the existing stereotype.

Generally speaking, the Asians (at least in Japan or China) would not really mind being accused of having no individuality all that much – at least not in the sense of the word WE use. Confucianism – the true worth (broadly speaking tao – the balance between ying and yang) has the emperor by born (or the more recent RED emperor), but the ordinary people? Not really. They have faith in the divine origin of the emperor (or the bloody dictator and his generals) and his actions, no matter what they are, their civilisation is “cratocentrist” (cratos – the state) and been like that quite for a while. I recommend reading books from Jaroslav Krejci, he researched this for more than 40 years. Japan – Shintoism – they believe in the collective soul, so you cannot really consider the same “individuality” as we understand it. I recommend reading Ruth Benedict´s anthropological study on Japan (The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, I think), where you can read about the Japanese society around WW2 – the soldiers, for example, were merely a material to use – they did not really treated they wounded and when it was time to move, they let them commit seppuku. That was and still IS Japan.

The perception of “having no individuality” as “bad” is not universal, you argument is built on wrong premises. Premises built on anthropology, comparative religion and sociology that can be right about most things in the Western society (at least for the European ethnicities like Slavs, Anglo-Saxons..), but concerning rest of the world I think it is safe to say that they are “a bit” lacking.

Considering ourselves superior, because we are more individual than other is not racism, but ignorance and short-sightedness. In what bloody sense is a “race” (as modern anthropology and biology has proven, there is no such thing as a “race”, but ethnicities) consisting of individuals superior in comparison to one that is different in that matter? Especially considering that the euro-american individuality is seriously flawed? If someone is thinking that, he is simply a Fach Idiot to me, as would Heidegger say, and he, alas, lacks the ability or will to see the big picture, the “whole”, not just the things in his imminent surroundings.

And considering it in the field of ethics..well, that would need a much longer message and it would not be so clear, the “buts” would be on both sides. However, considering it in the field of politics and economics yields a clearer message – who is bloody winning on these two fields? Who is grasping more and more power and money? US (the West) with our precious individualism or THEM (the East) with their more or less “collectivism”?

I do not need to prove my point (it would be a nice bonus, though), but I always try to make people THINK and analyse without all the pre-assumptions and certainties. Too many pre-assumptions is wrong and certainties..well, I do not think there are all that many, IF ANY.

Im interested to know this as well. It does say “[pre-order]from ONE of our official Digital Download partners” suggesting there is more than one partner but there doesnt appear to be any other options

I did some free flight with the beta since yesterday and I must say, I’m not too impressed.

I play this on a rather mediocre system:
Athlon X4 640 @ 3Ghz
4 Gigs of RAM
Geforce GTX 460

I set most of the settings to “normal” and it runs around 25-40 in the outskirts and about 20-30 in areas with dense buildings.

The helicopter models look really good, the terrain isn’t THAT convincing when you fly really low.
It’s pretty blurry but thats a common issue especially when you use a satellite picture. (Which TKOH does IIRC)

The flight model feels good and believable, though I never flew a helicopter myself but it’s definately better than in Microsoft’s Flight Simulator 2004, of course not as accurate (read: difficult) as in DCS: Black Shark but since TKOH is a helicopter game and not a simulator, I’m okay with that.

To sum it all up, I’m not overwhelmed by the beta but I don’t regret pre-ordering it either.